Me and my Mates

"I didn't but I have now, I sort of made it up as I went along. These were not improvements to an existing structure, it was planned from the beginning and I'll explain why. The house is built over the equivalent of a swimming pool. The concrete tank came first, it had to be that way because, with the pole construction, I couldn't have the poles in the centre of the house swimming in water, they had to be separated from the water in the pool. Once I had to roof on the tank with the poles sticking up I could finish the construction. There is a submersible electric pump connected to a pipe the feeds the sprinkler system on the roof."

"What it there's a power outage, what do you do then?"

"There's no such beast as a power outage where I am, I am off-grid and have a battery back-up that can provide power for several hours, more than enough for the fire-front to pass."

"Won't the tank eventually run out of water?"

"If you look at the plan you will see that the roof drains back into the tank. Very little water is lost and is usually fully replaced in the first downpour. You will also notice that I have used half-round guttering instead of the usual ogee profile. The reason being that, with the turbulence of the water entering the gutter, it is virtually self-cleansing, and instead of having a wide plan area for the water to lie in, there is virtually no chance of that happening, reducing the likelihood of the gutter rusting."

"The other thing that Julie told us about was those misting fans that you set up. Can you explain your thinking there?"

"I experimented with the most effective use of water in fire-fighting. I had noticed that the hoses used by metropolitan brigades have spray nozzles instead of stream nozzles. I thought about this for a while and remembered seeing micro-spray nozzles being used by roadside herbicide sprayers. They gave a more uniform application and used less chemicals than the traditional method. The downside, and why these are not used anymore, was that the operators tended to inhale more of the poisonous fumes. Because these 'misters' set up a mist wall, the embers are dowsed before they hit the ground, as well as that, the grass is kept moist so that, in the odd chance that an ember slips through, there is no dry tinder to ignite."

"There is a problem as I see it, all of this must-have added considerably to the cost of the building."

"I wouldn't know about that, Any equipment needed I bought second hand from disposal yards and the labour was all of my own sweat and tears. Effectively, to me, the cost was the materials needed. As for the house, the timber I had milled for me from trees cut down to clear a space. I had to buy roofing iron and guttering, PVC pipes for the connections to the rainwater tank and the cost of the tanks themselves, second-hand plastic tanks didn't cost much. As for the plumbing and electrical installations, because I was off-grid and using a septic system, I didn't need licensed contractors to do the work, I did it myself."

Can you leave the plans with us, I would like to get our Architects to look at them and get costings for a builder to carry out the work."

"Go your hardest, it might shock you. It's certainly not something that can be done after the house has been built."

We left them with it and headed home.

We had a welcoming committee of one waiting on the front steps for, at least my return.

"Fuck."

"The good lady wife I presume."

"The very same."

"Hello Steve," She looked at Julie, "This is awkward, I came to have a word with you."

"Come inside, I'll rustle up a cup of coffee." Okay, I'm a coward to leave the two of them together, but I trusted Julie to play it cool.

"So you're Sonia, Steve has told me quite a lot about you."

"Oh dear, I'll bet it wasn't good."

"Actually it was okay, there's no animosity as far as he's concerned. We've been discussing our future and your name has come up."

"I suppose that he's decided that he wants a divorce."

"It has been a part of the discussion, but neither of us is in any kind of rush to go down that path, we're sorting ourselves out first."

"Oh."

"Coffee's up." I announced as I came over with a tray." I set it down on the table. "That's yours, Sonia, Julie's this one." I grabbed my mug and sat down. "I haven't introduced you, Sonia, this is Julie, she and I are what you would call an item. Julie, this is my wife Sonia."

"I have been trying to get in touch with you for some time," Sonia said, "but couldn't find you, you seemed to have dropped off the face of the earth. Why did you toss your job in, you loved that job."

"But I couldn't disappear off the face of the earth if I stayed in that job. I didn't want you to find me, I would have done something nasty and probably illegal if I'd allowed myself to be found. It took a long time to get over your betrayal. By the way, how is Andrew?"

"We're no longer together."

"I'm sorry. I was sort of hoping that you'd be happy with him."

"I came here hoping to discuss the possibilities of getting back with you."

"I'm sorry that you came all this way, there is nothing to discuss. To put it bluntly, Julie and I have a future, you and I don't. I was about to contact you let you know that if you wanted a divorce I wouldn't stand in your way. You can keep the house, I, we are quite comfortable here. I had assumed that you and Andrew would still be together."

"I think I'd better go." She grabbed her bag and almost sprinted to her car.

"We haven't hard the last of this," Julie said. "You could have been a little more diplomatic."

"I know, but my blood was fast approaching boiling point. During the period after I split, I rationalised our marriage. Right from the very beginning, it was all about her. Our family and friends were under the impression that we were the perfect couple and, to a certain extent we were, as long as I obeyed her every whim. It got to the point where I'd go along with her just to keep the peace. My reaction to finding that she and Andrew had been shagging, was accentuated by my feelings, it was still about her, and she didn't care enough about me to remain faithful. That was the tipping point. Now she lobs on our doorstep expecting me to drop my life with you and scurry back to her. My thoughts and, by extension your thoughts did not enter into her thinking. That's it, there's nothing more to be said."

Julie took me into her arms and kissed me, her lips moved to my neck and up to my ear lobes. Her mouth moved to my ear and she blew gently into my ear, A shiver ran up my spine. I took her face in mine, "You are the most amazing woman, do you know that?"

"Amazing how?"

"You must have been upset by Sonia and what she wanted of me, I would have understood that. You listened quietly while I vented my spleen on her and the situation in silence and, while it must have been scary for you, showed no emotion. And now, instead of being upset at what had happened, you quietly tell me that I could have been a little more diplomatic. That doesn't come close to what I deserved, and then you show the deepest of compassion. I love you."

The next few months were a mixture of normality, Julie going to work and me and my mates looking after our place, interspersed with, being served with divorce papers by Sonia, an offer of a consultancy from the RFS followed by the declining of the offer, followed by a further, more tempting offer, neither of which took into consideration my commitment to looking after Julie and my other mates. This was where my priorities remained until . . .

"Darling, I think that we should consider erecting some partitions."

"Why?"

"We can hardly have the kids watching us make love now, can we?"

"Kids, did you just say kids?"

"Yes, well at least one in the near future."

"Does this mean . . .?"

"Wow, that earth-shattering clatter was the sound of the penny dropping! Yes, my Darling, we are with child, you've knocked me up, there's a bun in the oven, whatever way you look at it, I'm pregnant."

"Wow, that's great! There are two things to do, sorry three things to do. The first is to finalise my divorce, the second is for me to take over the bread-winner role, and that will mean me getting back into the IT world so that I can be a work from home as a part-time Consultant."

"And what is the third?"

"That would be for me to make an honest woman of you. Julie Thomas, will you marry me?"

"Not necessary, but to make you happy, yes, yes I will."

The next several months involved a quantum shift in our lifestyle. The first thing was to increase generation capacity. We did this with more solar panels and a couple of wind generators to augment the existing capacity. We had to join the outside world by shoving a satellite dish on the roof for internet and email connectivity. I retrieved my CAD computer from my former home and I was set up. Several trips into the big smoke enabled me to link with the RFS computers. This enabled me to transfer electronically what, in the past, would have had to be packed in protective packaging and sent by snail mail.

By the time that this was sorted and I'd again become a productive member of the workforce, Julie had entered her third trimester and we were looking forward to the new member of our family. Julie had sold, to Pete, her half of the house that they'd inherited from their parents. He was happy, his new wife Louise was happy, and we were happy with our larger contingency budget.

Fast forward three years. Our mates, let's face it, I do not have sole rights to them, are quite comfortable allowed Dashiell (Dash) Jackson, our son, to help us feed them. Having replaced the dying batteries in her biological clock with some of the rechargeable variety, Julie has decided that we should wander, hand in hand, down the procreation path and have at least three kids, the second of which is well on the way.

My consultancy work with the RFS has expanded since they have spread the word about my designs to other authorities in bush-fire prone areas throughout the world. I did a deal with the RFS, I sold them the licence to my work for a percentage of the income that they derive from it.

I have the best of both worlds, my world with my mates and the real world.